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Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill was introduced by parliament member David
Bahati in October 2009. The bill seeks to eradicate homosexuality from Uganda
and become a model for the rest of Africa.

Among the proposals in the bill: prison terms for Ugandans who fail to report
a homosexual within 24 hours; lifelong prison sentences for a single homosexual
act; and the death sentence for a range of acts, including having gay sex while
HIV-positive, having gay sex with a disabled person or being classified as a
"serial offender" — that is, someone who has gay sex more than once.

Alveda King obviously needs a little history lesson -- from somebody other than David Barton.

The national motto chosen by our founders was "E Pluribus Unum." The changing of our national motto to "In God We Trust" and the placing of this motto on our money didn't happen until the 1950s. Like adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, putting "In God We Trust" on our money was the direct result of the "red scare" fears of "godless" communists infiltrating our society and government -- the same fears being revived by Glenn Beck.

The irony here? It was this fear of communists, and the claims of their ties to the civil rights movement, that led the F.B.I. to start wiretapping Martin Luther King, Jr.'s phone in the months following his "I have a dream" speech. Maybe Alveda King needs to do a little reading up on that.

Alveda King has been cut off from the King family because she has made a career out of trading on the King name while peddling views that are diametrically opposed to those held by Martin Luther King Jr.

The Christian Right has often sought to stay the hand of God, angry with our failings as a nation, by "standing in the gap" at large prayer rallies and pleading for mercy. They have made a special point of doing so in the run up to national elections since 1980, praying for godly government and righteous candidates, and this year is no exception. The beneficiaries are almost always Republicans and this year is probably no exception in that regard as well. But there is also an ominous element that mostly transcends parties and is on vivid display as we enter the fall campaign season.

On Labor Day weekend, Lou Engle, head of the fiery neo-Pentecostal group, The Call, is leading a.... Sacramento event...repositioned as the kick-off of a major Christian Right fall political campaign initiative. Engle says it will be the "hinge of history" opening the door to "the greatest awakening" and "returning our nation to its righteous roots."

[T]his is an effort at reaching and mobilizing evangelical young people into Republican politics, particularly in California.... [I]t represents a new stage in the long term cooperation between conservative Catholics, fundamentalists and the neo-Pentecostals. [T]he militant rhetoric of Engle's armies of activists is escalating, and their organizational infrastructure seems to be increasing, especially in cyberspace.

“Do not open unless you are deeply alarmed by President Obama’s plans for America, read the front of one direct mailing from the Family Research Council (2010). “The Hard-core socialists in control of our country are bent on advancing their damaging agenda regardless of what the American people thinks,” writes Tony Perkins, the group’s President.

Glenn Beck says he’s “reclaiming the civil rights movement,” but his ideas about race are rooted in the theology of a historical revisionist who had no problem with “biblical” slavery.

David Barton, Glenn Beck’s favorite history “professor,” is the creator and purveyor of a revisionist history of race in America that is rapidly gaining traction in conservative and Tea Party circles......Barton frames the details for maximum impact on contemporary politics, to an increasingly growing audience. Like Barton’s larger revisionist effort to develop and perpetuate the narrative that America is a “Christian nation....".....Barton’s narrative is gaining a hearing.

The constitutional division between church and state, Barton argues, was imposed on an unwilling nation by the Supreme Court in 1947.

Barton’s “history” is studded with errors. The Myth of Separation contained so many mistakes that Barton withdrew the book and re-titled it Original Intent.

Barton is also less eager to talk today about his first book, America: To Pray or Not To Pray? It’s an embarrassing collection of charts that Barton uses to “prove” that the 1962 Supreme Court decision striking down school-sponsored prayer led to an increase in crime, higher rates of venereal disease, more alcoholism and so on. The self-published tome is no longer featured on the WallBuilders site – although Beck mentioned Barton’s charts on the air July 1.

But none of this has slowed Barton down. If anything, his celebrity in the Religious Right has only increased. These days, his site proudly proclaims, “As Seen on Glenn Beck.” Original Intent is selling briskly on Amazon.com. This summer, he appeared with Beck at a series of rallies dubbed the “American Revival Tour,” a national campaign slated to culminate with Beck, Barton and Sarah Palin joining forces at an Aug. 28 “Restoring Honor” event at the Lincoln Memorial.

Those who have been busy pointing out the hypocrisy of those right-wing activists who hail the fundamental importance of defending the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom while simultaneously leading a crusade against the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" have been fond of asking just how large the "mosque exclusion zone" is supposed to be.

For the past several years, two U.S. Army posts in Virginia, Fort Eustis and Fort Lee, have been putting on a series of what are called Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concerts. As I've written in a number of other posts, "spiritual fitness" is just the military's new term for promoting religion, particularly evangelical Christianity. And this concert series is no different.

On May 13, 2010, about eighty soldiers, stationed at Fort Eustis while attending a training course, were punished for opting out of attending one of these Christian concerts. The headliner at this concert was a Christian rock band called BarlowGirl, a band that describes itself as taking "an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God."

When fundamentalists flocked into politics in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, they had few theorists to turn to. They had always believed politics was worldly, and true Christians should focus on converting souls, not running the government. Rushdoony insisted that God wanted them to take over society and crush the infidels (literally).

Robert Billings, an early Religious Right strategist, said, “If it weren’t for [Rushdoony’s] books, none of us would be here.”

The Rushdoony influence on the Religious Right continued throughout his life. He helped birth the home-school movement that has replenished Religious Right’s ranks, and he was an early member of the Council for National Policy, the secretive meeting ground for right-wing heavy-hitters. His ideas popped up in all sorts of places, from Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” to D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries.

.....

It’s best to take these obituaries of the Religious Right with a grain of salt. So, too, the Post obit on Christian Reconstructionism.